They probably could have given a proper powerpoint presentation in addition to that with a Playbook, given that it has a full office suite on it. They really need to embrace this platform more and not let the bitter tech world scare them.

I, for one, look forward to quitting my job and simply setting myself on top of an inductive charging couch, watching TV, and eating as much fattening food as possible to sell my bio-power back to the grid. I aspire to one day becoming something like a defecating tree.

Believe it or not, there are actually many people who work at Microsoft. Some people are "Business" people. They're the people that pay you to do whatever it is you do and make decisions regarding your company's direction. These people can work to make such decisions as acquiring other companies. Other people are "Engineers". At a software company, they create and maintain software. Because there are MANY people at a big company (more kinds of people than you have fingers!), a company can both create software and purchase other companies at the same time. So, instead of thinking of a company like one person-- you should look at it as a _group_ of people (almost like a small town) who can do many things at once. Working in groups is how people accomplish big things! Think about how in your hometown there are people who sell groceries, people who deliver mail, AND people who fight fires-- but they're not necessarily the same people.

Okay... so you don't need social scientists because you're *so good* at mining electronic data... but they're already mining the data electronically, as stated in TFA.

The automated data collection system is to focus on patterns of communication, consumption and movement of populations. It will use publicly accessible data, including Web search queries, blog entries, Internet traffic flow, financial market indicators, traffic webcams and changes in Wikipedia entries.

What do you do with that data? How do you determine what data to collect and how to use it? Assuredly no one has expertise in this field because you don't explicitly understand it. Who do you think actually uses data?

An Android-based phone? You really don't know much about how this security stuff works, do you?

If a phone that needs to pass any level of non-casual security certifications is to be linux-based, it's going to imprisoned behind an extremely restrictive hypervisor. If the only thing separating the interface from the hardware is linux, it will never pass the requisite security certifications. No device like that has and none ever will lest Linux cease being Linux.

If people can run Linux on PS3's, then chances are pretty good they will find a way to insecurely boot Linux on their PC's if they would rather screw with conf files than study. On the other hand, there's still no indication that the ability to disable secure boot will be widely unavailable-- the only example you have of a computer with secure boot currently allows it to be disabled. Are you just anonymously angry about the way you imagine computing to be if it goes in such a way that might upset you?

So, a couple of small time vandals got arrested. The movement with which they are loosely affiliated is generally considered to be a national security threat. This doesn't mean that every single person is individually a security threat.. this means that a group of people getting organized to disrupt the military and government through cybercrime is a threat. This a big concept to swallow for reactionaries. If one person running down a street breaks a window, then he is a vandal. If a thousand people are running down the street breaking windows, then you have a riot-- and a riot is extremely dangerous. The drug trade is a national security threat. Some hippie who gets stoned and writes Ruby on Rails code while generating bitcoins on his hacked PS3 is not a national security threat-- yet the drug trade as a whole has elevated street criminals to royal status and nearly collapsed the Mexican government. When a politician lies about his personal life, he is dishonest. When he lies about policy, his intentions, and virtually everything else, then he is insidious and anti-social.

Arresting people and holding them accountable for the smaller crimes they commit is a necessary step toward maintaining a peaceful and safe society. If people believed they could do anything they wanted on the internet, even if it is disruptive, expensive, and widely coercive to others, then the activity would exacerbate and the people who would be victimized would feel unsafe. The same is true with hate crimes, rape, or theft. Degenerate people will do whatever they can get away with for attention, out of spite, or just because they feel vindicated by some perceived threat from society at large.

The FBI is extinguishing a lit wastebasket in an effort to prevent-- not directly but conceptually-- a forest fire, yet this forced narrative seems to suggest that they are calling the wastebasket fire a forest fire. There is no indication that they are.

Kind of like how the release of the Hybrid car eliminated car tuning and hot rod culture? If there's a market in selling computer components, it will remain. There's no dark force moving against that. It's just a business.

One might gather that it's not worth the trouble for NT to ape Unix anymore. Chances are pretty good Linux is the new SUA and virtualization will be the new supported solution to this problem. I mean, why should Microsoft bother maintaining its own Unix tools when they're actively maintained elsewhere? Given the work they've done on both virtualization and linux integration I would say that there's no great conspiracy here.

So, this school uses 100% open source software? I take it this particular school will not be producing any young graphical artists, filmmakers, or music producers, then?

For most tasks students complete on school computers, I would prefer to deploy Ubuntu Desktops instead of overhauled Windows XP workstations which need to be manually pampered into health. If everyone is using open office, all documents produced at the school will look god-awful, but this will be a grand equalizer between students, demonstrating to them that there is no place for presentation in academic content.

So, this will be fine for students in most subjects... but I have to feel bad for anyone with creative or artistic leanings. Linux is an engineer's world. While young programmers will be able "express themselves" with terrible unix code and tools, artists will be left learning with archaic and useless tools that have no bearing to professional software where they could be more productive on Macs or even Windows machines. They may not suffer from "vendor lock-in", but they will be subject to "industry lock-out". Ubuntu systems are really only pragmatic in some cases.